Aussie Girl Guides Go Godless

Millions have paid their respects this year to Queen Elizabeth II during her diamond jubilee, marking her 60th year on the throne. But some of her young subjects, the Girl Guides of Australia, have now deleted the queen from their oath, along with a reference to God.

Unceremonious, one might say. It’s about time, according to others.

The Girl Guides, a sister organization of the Girl Scouts, has 10 million members worldwide. Founded in Britain in 1910, the Girl Guides now has about 28,000 members in Australia, down from a reported high of 80,000.

With the deletions of God and queen, the Guides hope “to be seen as more inclusive and a modern, relevant organization and that many more women will like to join us,” said Belinda Allen, director of Girl Guides Australia.

In the old oath, formally known as the Guiding Promise, a girl swore to “do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and my country.”

The new promise is actually a better fit for Jewish people in that sense, but I think the new promise is a better fit for everyone.

Because Jews cannot in good conscience pledge allegiance to the non-specific God of the old Girl Guides pledge?:

I promise that I will do my best:
To do my duty to God,
to serve the Queen and my country,
To help other people, and
To keep the Guide Law.

I am not a monarchist, but I would a thousand times prefer to live in a world of Gods and Queens than under this soulless egalitarianism, which is, in Burke’s phrase, “the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings.”

The US Boy Scouts has God in their oath, but they don’t define which one. They leave that open to interpretation of the scout and their parents. So you can have Christian, Jewish, Pagan, and Hindu scouts in the same troop. In a sense the oath is the same, each scout is pledging fidelity to their own beliefs. But that’s life in the 21st century.

The problem with living in a world of Gods and Queens is that there are other people – neither gods nor queens – who stand ready to use the authority of the idea of Gods and Queens to impose their will on others or to commit atrocities in the name of Gods and Queens.

“I am not a monarchist, but I would a thousand times prefer to live in a world of Gods and Queens than under this soulless egalitarianism…”

I think the apolitical preference for “a world of Queens” is about as insipid as it gets. Cf “I’m not a believer, but I would prefer to live in a world of Gods.” Rest assured that “soulless” democracy will generate plenty of like-minded longers, filled with the same empty, decadent nostalgic preferences.

And yet support for the monarchy in Australia is, according to the polls, at its highest level for many years, with a comfortable majority in favour of keeping it: (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/queen-jubilee/new-polling-shows-support-for-the-monarchy-in-australia-is-at-its-highest-level-since-1991/story-fnaivo74-1226170467111).
The monarchy has proved a cleverly adaptive institution. On the one hand, it allows people to indulge in their wistful nostalgia for the values which have been sacrificed for freedom in our therapeutic society. The Queen herself in her eighties encapsulates those pre-60s values of duty, honour, and uncomplaining stoicism – the very values the Girl Guides also used to encapsulate. The monarchy also retains a glimmer of that old semi-Christian, semi-pagan sacramental magic and ritual which modern rationalist technocracies just don’t provide, but which a lot of people still enjoy in moderate doses. Eqaully, it appeals to people’s less lovable old-fashioned tribalism. In an ever more multicultural Australia, it creates an emotionally reassuring sense of continuity with the homogenous past for many older Anglo-Australians – the old days when, in Prime Minister Menzies’s words, Australians were ‘British to the bootstraps’.
Of course, the other side of the story is that the younger royals (Will, Kate, Harry) have been reinvented as cool modern celebrities, titillating people with gossip to amuse them in the midst of their drab lives, just as Hollywood celebrities do. A lot of younger people are happy enough to keep it for this reason. And the post-1960s anti-British Australian nationalism that used to fuel republicanism is running out of puff among more cosmopolitan young people.
In other words, at the moment, the monarchy appeals to both people’s most old-fashioned instincts and their most up-to-date ones. Whether they can keep this delicate balance going in the long run is another question. They have more chance of doing it then the Girl Guides, however, who, like belong irredeemable to the dead old world pre-1960s world of duty and community-mindedness, along with the Methodist Church, the blue-collar trade unions, and the Rotary Club. All their liberalism won’t save them…they are more old-fashioned than the most literalist Pentecostal church.

Supernaturalistic religion is simply not relevant to many (most?) people in advanced countries today, as yesterday’s post on the Episcopal church in the US showed, and this group is simply being honest about it. As Tyro says, Australia is not a particularly church-going country, so I don’t think the new oath is all the work of ‘secular elites’.

The problem with living in a world of Gods and Queens is that there are other people – neither gods nor queens – who stand ready to use the authority of the idea of Gods and Queens to impose their will on others or to commit atrocities in the name of Gods and Queens.

John, come on — we see all the time people who believe in neither gods nor queens using their lack of belief in traditional authority to impose their will on others. It happens all the time. You yourself may be a secularist egalitarian, so all this is normative to you, but you should at least consider that in practice, this is by no means a neutral position.

I think the apolitical preference for “a world of Queens” is about as insipid as it gets. Cf “I’m not a believer, but I would prefer to live in a world of Gods.” Rest assured that “soulless” democracy will generate plenty of like-minded longers, filled with the same empty, decadent nostalgic preferences.

Why might one prefer a world of Queens even if one is not a monarchist? Burke answers that in the passage from which I quoted:

All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland the simulation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of her naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order.

I think you have the idea of what constitutes “decadence” backwards, Matt.

“I am not a monarchist, but I would a thousand times prefer to live in a world of Gods and Queens than under this soulless egalitarianism…”

The problem with the world of Queens and Gods is that there is only one Queen and that while she and her friends may live a life of luxury, the vast majority of the population lives nasty short and brutish lives barely scrapping a living out of a piece of dirt with only two forms of entertainment to relieve their woes, Sex and Church one leading to dead babies and the other to superstitious ignorance.

When you write stuff like this Mr Dreher, you remind me of those people who remember a previous life, all of them remember being Kings, Princes, Merchants and other such important people, none of them remember being peasants which is what 90% of the population was prior to the nineteenth century.

Give me the soulless egalitarianism that will let me live in comfort into my nineties, see my children live in comfort into their sixties and my grand children in their thirties. You can keep your Gods, your Queens and all the other romantic claptrap that goes with it…

John, come on — we see all the time people who believe in neither gods nor queens using their lack of belief in traditional authority to impose their will on others. It happens all the time.

Sure, you are absolutely correct.

My response is that I prefer (ab)uses of power to be displayed as a naked fist of human will, not cloaked in Divine Authority, either theocratic or derived from same.

Why do I prefer this? Because it brings the struggle for power into the human realm of people contending for what they think best and disposes of the idea that they are fighting to implement the Will of God and/or His Divine Representative.

And I heartily second Don Quijote’s comment:

Give me the soulless egalitarianism that will let me live in comfort into my nineties, see my children live in comfort into their sixties and my grand children in their thirties. You can keep your Gods, your Queens and all the other romantic claptrap that goes with it…

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order.

I fail to see this as the sort of indictment that Rod apparently does. Read up on the European “Royal Bloodlines” sometime – I ‘m not sure the planet has ever seen a bigger collection of inbred, imbecilic sociopaths. Thoroughly dispensing with the idea of hereditary monarchies as a viable system of government – or at least neutering them and turning them into down-market reality-T.V. stars – is probably the single greatest accomplishment of our species in the last 500 years.

[Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.]

I’m actually surpised to say this about Edmund Burke, but where the first half of the above quotation may show him to have been either out-of-touch or dishonest, you, Mr. Dreher, have no excuse for quoting it uncritically.

“power gentle” – Were the Habsburgs, Tudors, Bourbons or Romanovs gentle in their exercise of power? Or the emporers of China or the Kings of Africa, or all of those lower ranks of Lords and Ladies and Officials?

“obedience liberal” – For a time, obedience may appear liberal, but judging from the peasant rebellions that regularly racked the kingdoms and empires of the past, I would guess that it was more often sullen or cowed, especially in the years and decades following the suppression of failed rebellions.

“the sentiments which beautify and soften private society” – “Are there no workhouses? No prisons?” How many beautiful spaces were created for the benefit and use of the masses? The churches, you might say, and the charitable works of SOME in the churches did soften the lives of some of the worst off. The first sentence of Marx’s famous line is generally left out, where he acknowledges this: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” But the churches enjoyed state support more as agents of social control and stability, and anti-clericalism found fertile soil in the experiences of many a serf and peasant.

“All the decent drapery of life…are to be exploded as ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.” – Burke has a point here, and this kind of vulgar and needlessly destructive pseudo-radicalism needs to be combatted within revolutionary movements.

“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order.” – Kings and queens are but men and women, but people are not animals, nor animals people, contrary to the ideas of the Animal Liberation Front folks. But then, it has been noted that the British aristocracy often evinced more sympathy and feeling for animals than for people of the lower classes, and they were hardly representatives of the “conquering empire of light and reason.”

Re: “decadence”: Compare a defense of monarchy as a “pleasing illusion” by a romantic reactionary like Burke with the doctrine of divine right of hereditary rule. The former is decadent, the latter (for all its problems) is not. The former arises as the political and economic reality that was monarchy begins to *decay*; the latter belongs to an era in which that power is thriving. In its best versions, the divine right argument is a serious treatment of moral and theological realities by means of reason. In its best versions, the romantic argument may be stirring, but remains touchy-feely.

Well, we must be charitable to Rod and his penchant for following nutty philosophers. Wendell Berry was not mad enough so he went to Edmund Burke and if this keeps up he’ll convert to Cosimaninan Orthodoxy and go completely off the deep end.

Ok, serious. This is rather silly for the simple reason that contemporaries may or may not believe in a God, they may or may not have much use for that bizarre collection of the product of first cousins marrying known as kings and queens but, sir, you may count upon the fact that none have any use for the idea of duty.

Some people do, and I always find it highly annoying. A significant part of American conservatism is little better than Marxism, which also believes a philosophy and dogmatic economic theories developed in the mid-19th(!) century remains directly applicable today.

I do think Edmund Burke, John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville (even Karl Marx!) made some good observations about contemporary economics and social ills. But Edmund Burke & co. were still children of their era. Burke understandably reacted against the horrible excesses of the French revolution, but his views re. atheism make little sense today.

Oh come on! Like service to Australia is any less tyrannical than to a queen? A queen may be right when everyone else in the government be wrong, and God may be a refuge when even a queen is under corrupt advisers, but who can dipute when your oath is to serve Australia? How can you resist evil then?

And it is so easy to speak in the name of Australia. Australia will never rise up and claim her royal signet has been stolen, or point to a Holy Book and say that an older authority shows that you are lying; that there is a deeper Australia that you are breaking in doing this.

That’s the strength of the old pledge. By being specific it gives shelter to do what is right. But if you serve Australia, you serve a wispy multitude of phantoms and there is nothing higher except serving your own self. That’s not going to give anyone strength, except maybe egotists.

When I was in Boy Scouts I was toying with atheism… it occurred to me that an atheist’s duty to God is nothing, so I could take the oath in good conscience. Didn’t want to miss out on any camping trips over an oath.

To the extent that scouting is a rite of passage, good fellowship and learning a set of skills, fun activities for youth, trying to set more specific common principles may be a bad idea. To the extent it is built around specific beliefs, it will not be a civic institution. (Admittedly, at this time it probably isn’t anyway).

The real problem with this dreary secular pledge is the compulsion to replace God, Queen and country with something else. Just drop it if you don’t want it. Self is no substitute for God, whether there is a God or not.

“A significant part of American conservatism is little better than Marxism, which also believes a philosophy and dogmatic economic theories developed in the mid-19th(!) century remains directly applicable today.”

Ah yes, the old argument for “New Ideas!”

And yet is is funny how often what is old is new again. I recently made a study of Chinese Trotskyism and found myself thinking how much of what Trotsky and the Chinese Trotskyists wrote could have been written about Honduras in the wake of the coup against Zelaya.

And just today, I read Trotsky take a swipe at Balkan liberals in his journalism on the Balkan Wars (100 years ago ) for their support for a “social justice” with no class content.

Often enough, the “New Ideas” are just new versions of very old ones.

There is wisdom to be found and applied to today in the best left-wing voices of the past, and even some of the better right-wing ones.

Dave Dutcher writes: “Like service to Australia is any less tyrannical than to a queen? A queen may be right when everyone else in the government be wrong, and God may be a refuge when even a queen is under corrupt advisers, but who can dipute when your oath is to serve Australia? How can you resist evil then?

This is why Aristotle (among others) counseled against Democracy. One can appeal to God from a decision of a monarch (as did Sir Thomas More, among others), because that monarch, being Human, may actually recognize the existence of God, but from the decisions of a mindless mob (which is what Democracy means, when you get right down to it) there is no appeal.

Not to mention that today’s “democratic” states are all too often collections of mobs being manipulated by the whims and ambitions of corrupt and evil men….against whose wishes there is no appeal, because they quite often cannot even be found or identified.

This is why I am no supporter of Democracy, or even Equality, in any political form.

MH writes: “appealing to a king didn’t work out so well for Sir Thomas More.”

True enough, in the sense that Sir Thomas died anyway. But I seem to recall that the form of his plea, and its meaning, have survived and been passed along for close to five centuries. That, in its turn, carries the principle along and re-establishes it in new hearts and minds.

Lord Karth overlooks that one purpose of a constitution is to put certain matters as far outside the jurisdiction of electoral majorities as that of crowned monarchs. At key points in history, the angels of our better nature recognize that there are some aspects of life we don’t want our neighbors voting on for us.

As someone who enjoyed reading Tolkien and has a complete set of the Chronicles of Narnia, who is also a heterodox non-Trinitarian Christian and firmly devoted to secular constitutional republican government, I can find nuggets of truth in all the above comments, or almost all.

Burke’s “pleasing illusions” have their place, offering a pattern to life that can be comforting and esthetically pleasing. Even feudal fealty has its attractions, provided you are not cut out to be an alpha, and find exactly the right leader to place your trust in. But, in real life, it generally didn’t work like that. Feudalism had its origins in glorified gang warfare and protection rackets. To cover such butchery with “pleasing illusions” was not a kindness.

Democracy is not rule by the people, because most of the people, most of the time, don’t want to be bothered. But it does allow more variables in play than a hereditary monarchy, which may give the people a Noble Prince or an insane potentate.

A king IS but a man. That’s why it it dangerous to pretend he is more. As James Otis said, only God is entitled to omnipotence, because only God is omniscient.